Building and learning in public, 1 post at a time.
This is where I share what I'm building, what it's teaching me, and some other bits of life I find interesting along the way. Experiments that worked, the ones that went sideways, and the lessons worth passing along. If you're a business owner wondering what AI can genuinely do for you, a fellow builder comparing notes, or simply a curious person like me, you're in the right place.
Latest post
Pasting a financial statement into an AI chat feels private, alone at your own computer. Here's what I learned about where that data goes, and the tools a lot of us don't think of as AI at all.
Attending business events was the thing I kept putting aside. For 3 months now my AI working partner has lined them up, and when I pick the comfortable ones, it pushes back.
In August I drew a mind map in my notebook with Me in the middle of the page. On October 2nd it went live as this site. Here's why I built it, and everything that sat between the page and the launch.
I brought a plan to the course interview that I was sure was already narrow, and the first thing I heard back was that it spanned 4 ideas and I needed to pick one. Coming to the end of the first block of The Lyceum, and the narrowing hasn't stopped since.
The copy was written and the steps were all there, and the page still felt wrong. Instructional design has spent 40 years on exactly that problem, and asking for the principles turned a vague feeling into something I could work with.
I went looking for a tool to make 6 diagrams for a site, then caught myself. The system I was already working alongside did it better, and that turned out to be the whole point.
I went looking into Google's Open Knowledge Format to see if it replaced the methodology I've been learning. It doesn't. It solves the other half.
On the side of a cliff above Banff, my whole mind was on the next rung. The view had been there the whole time.
The longer an AI chat runs, the more it drifts. The fix is not a better prompt, it is giving each step only the context it needs.
